Saturday, June 23, 2012

Auto Auction And NASCAR Clash Again

That is Arie Luyendyk and Barrett-Jackson's Amy Assiter posed at the Scottsdale auto auction with a copy of her charity CD. Amy and her husband Spanky are familiar faces to fans of the Barrett-Jackson TV franchise. Click here for Amy's website.

This weekend the auction is in Orange County, CA. Click here for a look at the cars that will be included. Perhaps it is a sign of the times that the line-up is not exactly stellar, but the six hours of live coverage on SPEED Friday will roll on despite the lack of top-notch product coming to the block.

What that coverage will roll right over-top of is the Sprint Cup Series live qualifying from Sonoma. One week after Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s win in Michigan, the qualifying session will be tape delayed until 11PM Eastern Time Friday night. There will be no online streaming of the live session.

The two topics that deserve attention when talking about this situation are Earnhardt and social media. This same situation happened to the series last season, but that was before Twitter and Facebook became such huge communication tools for the sport. It was also before Junior got another Sprint Cup Series win.

The beat writers on site will be live tweeting the qualifying as will the track, the teams and NASCAR. Fans will be checking the Internet for results that will be available instantly at a wide variety of websites. Now with NASCAR's two radio networks streaming online, the ability to keep information from the fans until the TV show airs is gone.

Earnhardt got a lot of media exposure this week, especially on the not too NASCAR friendly ESPN family of networks. NASCAR President Mike Helton made a point to get out in front of the media as well and proclaim Earnhardt as a Chase contender. Aside from an early practice, the next media focus on Earnhardt is the Friday qualifying session.

Next year NASCAR will reclaim its own digital rights that were sold to the Turner Sports group. Right now, the option exists for Turner to use NASCAR's own website to stream qualifying. This especially makes sense considering the actual race is part of the TNT coverage. Despite what some may feel is just common sense since the program is being fully produced as it happens, there is once again no online component.

In a word of multi-channel TV distribution and a growing live sports streaming industry, it's especially awkward for NASCAR to find itself in this position in the heart of the Sprint Cup Series season and with an especially good storyline underway with the emergence of Earnhardt. There are plenty of video pipelines to the fans, it's just a matter of finding one.

Saturday finds another live Barrett-Jackson telecast that will tape delay final practice coverage also into the 11PM timeslot. The full weekend NASCAR TV schedule is on the front page of The Daly Planet blog.

We invite your opinions on this topic. Comments may be moderated prior to posting.

30 comments:

Not showing practice and qualifying live tomorrow is another crushing blow for NASCAR. On the heels of JR's win, a huge audience would have instinctively tuned back in to the sport tomorrow. But only if it was shown live.

Once all those people get the info they desire via Twitter, they won't stick around for the tape delayed TV coverage. When will Speed learn their lesson. Social media is what drives the world anymore.

Mr Editor -No qualifying coverage until 11PM ET ...hmmmm, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz ...well after the results will be known and widely distributed ...so much for NASCAR's concern for long-time and new fans.Walter

NASCAN'T provides such a great service to.their fars!! Not! I thought the idea behind SPEEDTV was about racing and not all the stupid shows that are on it. Make a nascar channel and be done with the BS!

This seems to be the weekend of tape delay, with Cup Practice and Qualifying and F1 all being effected. I know that Barrett Jackson is a big ratings draw for SPEED, but at least they could stream the cup stuff online. The F1 race I understand what they are doing in putting it in a better time to increase viewers. In this digital ages, I'll know all the results before the races air and I won't watch it when it finally shows. And if there's anything major happens (in F1, like Mark Webber's bad crash a few years ago) in will end up on YouTube.

Qualifying at road courses is not the worlds most entertaining TV (I wish they would use European qualifying for Cup)...but I would have still watched anyways....but not at 11pm....obviously BJ is a big draw for them, my guess is, both viewers and certain kinds of advertisers. But Trina mentions the obvious solution, to have streamed it online would at least be something....

I long for the days of less TV coverage, real print media and something to make fans WANT to go see a race in person whenever possible. Not having everything from a crew chief's hangnail to what his wife wore to the awards banquet shoved down my throat.

Remember, this is the same SPEED that one week ago, cut away from *live racing* at Le Mans to show an hour of Cup cars practicing at Michigan. Yes, the tires and speeds were a big story, but that could have easily been covered with a few drop ins, rather than pre-empting live competition for a practice session.

JD, it leaves some of us in a real quandary as to where to place the blame here. In this case, I think that lies with Turner. They are only accommodating a six-pack of races this year, and along with at least three different network options, they maintain control over nascar.com until 2013.

If they are busy with reruns of Cops or the like, they could still stream practice and qualifying live online.

SPEED, as noted, belongs to FOX, but usually does a great job of picking up the slack in live coverage of fringe programming for all the networks. In this instance, they are committed to one of their cash cows, the Barrett-Jackson Auctions, which does draw a huge audience. For the person asking if Barrett-Jackson were paying SPEED, I'd wager it might be the other way around.

As a FOX network (And one I hope we are able to keep in the future) SPEED is under no obligation to sub for TNT and their less than stellar coverage. That seems to be something that NASCAR let slip through the cracks at contract time. Bet that doesn't happen for 2014.

Each week I post TV times for my website, www.racersreunion.com, as you do here, but I post them all... NASCAR, IndyCar, F1, ARCA and NHRA. I took extra time this week to explain the deficiency in coverage and suggested online places where stat coverage at least can be obtained. Both nascar.com and Jayski.com carry practice and qualifying at least semi-live. No video, but at least we can follow the process and hear the lineup in real time.

Thanks for what you do. It's always interesting to stop by the Planet.

I was at Sonoma Friday and Saturday last year and it was just amazing watching the cars on the road course. Am so disappointed it won't be aired live today and tomorrow because it really is a thrill to watch them go around the corners. Fortunately, I will be there Sunday in person to watch, what is to me, one of the most exciting races of the year. Last year I was blown away by the passing in areas where there never previously were passes and no passing in the obvious passing places. And I got to see ALL the drivers without tv telling me what and who to watch. Sunday I will think of everyone watching on TV missing all the good stuff.

If they at least streamed it live on SPEED.com it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But I still don't see it as that bad of an injustice, though. With the current qualifying format, we know over 75% of the cars are safe no matter what, and only 1 car is going home. (At least with provisionals there was still some unpredictablility) 2 hours of coverage can be reduced to a few minutes of highlights on SPEED Center.

Such a shame for Barrett-Jackson to actually overtake actual motorsports, yeah "blah blah blah it's only practice and qualifying", but it's the most exciting ones to watch all year because it's a road course. Barrett-Jackson is really watering down their product with these new auctions in Orange County and in Las Vegas anyway.

FOX/SPEED need to get with the times and use SPEED.com or SPEED2. It's absolutely ridiculous that won't use it for Barrett-Jackson or the NASCAR stuff online if there's a conflict.

Whats funny is last week Speed interrupted Live Race Coverage of the 24 Hours of LeMans to show an unscheduled NASCAR practice session. Now Speed tape delays Nascar Qualifying to show to an auto auction. Doesn't make much sense to me. No consistency.

We have this discussion every time BJ rolls around. Speed / Fox is in business to make money. If they run BJ instead of practice or qualifying, it's because they feel they will make more money doing so. They're not out to get NASCAR, but they don't owe anything to it either.

Thanks to the idiotic decision of SPEED to not air the qualifying live, I did listen to the PRN streaming on my computer. Because I know that track very well, it was very easy to mentally follow the cars around the track. Then I watched the qualifying as I wanted to get a sense of how the cars looked on the track. Two comments: How did I NOT know DW would be blathering? And, the way they kept switching cameras made me extremely dizzy - with the exception of a couple of corners it was very difficult to figure out where the car was on the track. If they would pull the camera back a bit, it would be easier to follow. Thank god I will be there in person and to all of you watching Sunday, you have my greatest sympathy.MtnVwJay

Hey Charlie Spencer: Yes, we get it, SPEED only exists to make money for its owners. But since this is a fan/media/analysis site, we're here talking about how SPEED's pursuit of every possible cent doesn't make the viewers happy. In case you weren't in on the memo, viewers = ratings = money.